Four people step onto the stage; one carries a fifth on his back. Two onstage musicians provide the soundtrack. There are echoes of Noh theatre about the scene – some of the actors are even carrying masks. But the costumes read differently: these are ‘realistic’ clothes, the blue shibori traditional tie-dyed cloth of the Japanese peasant. Once he steps down off his carrier's back, Martius, soon to be Coriolanus (Dai Ishida) does not speak; instead, he puts on his head a basket – the ego-effacing headwear of the Buddhist mendicant monk or Komuso (see Colour Plate 12). Is it there to evoke a military helmet? To suggest the beggar-monk seeking alms? Or is it both: the samurai warrior adopting a traditional disguise? Whatever the answer, the tone is set. This Coriolanus (it seems) is not about the irresolvable tragic conflict between the aristocracy and the plebians of Rome; this Coriolanus aims for comic subversion. It is a play about how the canny lower classes outwit the bombastic upper-class hero and get away with it. While Ishida's role as Coriolanus remains constant, the four other cast members who make up the ‘chorus’ (Satoko Abe, Shie Kubota, Saki Kohno and Yohei Kobayashi) are shape-shifters; they play senators and citizens, Romans and Volscians with a striking combination of equanimity and subversive playfulness. Shakespeare's scenes of riot and war in the long first act here become a series of childish games: the bugles do not quite work but instead produce Punch and Judy-style voices. Towards the end of the first half, those playground games return and escalate further as the chorus first follow Coriolanus, then play follow-my-leader, then further subvert that game with a mimicry that verges on bullying.

As Martius/Coriolanus laments his apparent imminent defeat, the chorus keep blowing out the votive torch he is trying to light; and this Roman hero is armed with…a baguette. It is a nice touch – Coriolanus famously starts with a bread shortage, a riot and a lot of talk about bellies.